Bobby Riggs had been a great champion in the 1930s ... likely no more than 500 attendees would have seen this match. But now, with the sport’s popularity skyrocketing, it was aired on CBS ...

watched cocky little Bobby Riggs tear into Big Jake. He slammed back Kramer’s seemingly unretrievable smashes. Though he once declined all invitations to the net, he now rushed it incessantly.

“It’s kind of fun to be the underdog—it’s a novelty,” said Don Budge last week. Cocky little Bobby Riggs—who won the pro tennis championship last December after ten years in the long ...